Morphology-Dependent Evolution of Galaxies in Mid-infrared Green Valley

  • Lee, Gwang-Ho (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Lee, Myung Gyoon (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Sohn, Jubee (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University)
  • Published : 2014.10.13

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of galaxies in mid-infrared (MIR) $[3.4{\mu}m]-[12{\mu}m]$ color versus $12{\mu}$ luminosity diagram using Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer data for member galaxies of the A2199 supercluster at $z{\simeq}0.03$. In the MIR color-luminosity diagram, we classify galaxies into three MIR classes: MIR blue cloud (massive, quiescent and mostly early-type), MIR star-forming sequence (mostly late-type), and MIR green valley galaxies. Both MIR green valley galaxies and MIR blue cloud galaxies are optically red sequence populations, and there is no significant difference in star formation rates and stellar masses between them. We compare cumulative distribution functions of surface galaxy number density and of cluster/group-centric distance between three MIR classes. However, when considering only early-type galaxies, the difference between MIR blue cloud galaxies and MIR green valley galaxies disappears. In contrast, the intermediate trend of MIR green valley galaxies is still found for late-type galaxies. We discuss our results concerning the difference of evolution between early- and late-type galaxies and the connection to environment.

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